1. Field of the Invention
Protective covers for books.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Modern day shopping at retail outlets has led to great demand for shopping bags typically constructed of paper or plastic and designed for containing a number of parcels, such as groceries which consumers making the shopping trip might employ for carrying the groceries from the store to the car and then at the residence from the car to the kitchen or other storage area.
In this regard, consumers will often times make several trips to the grocery store each month, often times purchasing such a quantity of groceries that five, seven, ten or even fifteen or more shopping bags might be required to conveniently transport the groceries from the store. After use, these bags are often then discarded to the garbage and then into landfills or possibly even to recycling centers. This consumption of paper bags thus contributes to the harvesting of additional quantities timber each year thus accelerating the rate of deforestation. The exponential increase in the consumption of plastic shopping bags in just the last few years and their slow rate of decomposition has resulted in the recognition that the bags themselves has not only added to the demand for petrochemicals but left society with a huge quantity of discarded and unwanted plastic bags which constitute such a nuisance and blight to the environment spurred many legislative bodies have been spurred to enact legislation limiting the use of plastic bags as such.
Meanwhile, it is well-known that students from the elementary classes through graduate school, each year require multiple books for their classes and study subjects and that the covers of such books can best be preserved for the school year and in some instances for subsequent resale, by placing protective covers on the books. In many instances, the books themselves are even sold with durable covers to protect the integrated book covers themselves but even then, the protective covers may become torn, ripped, worn, lost or discarded thus leaving the books themselves exposed to damage and deterioration from every day use and possible exposure to the elements.
It has long been a practice of parents and teachers for younger students, for instance, elementary students, to endeavor to persuade students to utilize wrapping paper and shopping bags to make individual book covers for their individual books. With current day society demands on parent, teacher and student time, this practice has, to a great extent, lost popularity and detracts from the time and opportunity available for teaching students to follow the expedient of cutting down shopping bags and cutting out individual book covers on a trial and error basis. As a result, society continues to contribute on a regular basis to filling up landfills and burdening the recycling industry with disposals of millions of shopping bags which could well be serving a second life as protective book covers.
In recognition of the fact that benefits could be had from recycling grocery bags as protective book covers, various procedures have been published and promoted proposing different methods for breakdown of individual grocery bags and seeking to outline the shape of the subject book and, to the extent successful, folding over at the edges to make individual book covers. Examples of these procedures have been published on-line so that access could be had to these procedures by those having the individual motivation and discipline to familiarize themselves with those procedures and spend the time experimenting with different shopping bags and making individual protective covers. Such procedures have not gained any popularity and do little to promote a second life for shopping bags serving as protective book covers.
Applicant is unaware of any shopping bag devices which themselves incorporate a ready graphic predetermined illustration of templates corresponding with the various common sizes of books to encourage the convenient breaking down of shopping bags for quick and convenient and foolproof sizing to closely fit different sizes of books.